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| borrowed_scenery_cultivating_an_alternate_reality [2013-04-15 14:32] – alkan | borrowed_scenery_cultivating_an_alternate_reality [2013-04-15 14:39] – alkan |
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| Thirdly, 'story making' was an approach that could be seen as a middle way between story and reality. This is where visitors created their own stories based on their perceptions of the space, people and events. In Borrowed Scenery it seemed to be quite rewarding for people to construct their own versions of the story and weave the disparate elements into new narratives. They would often incorporate elements of the backstory without explicitly knowing of it. It was thrilling for us to hear our story told in someone else's words. Even more inspiring were the new stories that emerged, built on our invisible scaffolding. | Thirdly, 'story making' was an approach that could be seen as a middle way between story and reality. This is where visitors created their own stories based on their perceptions of the space, people and events. In Borrowed Scenery it seemed to be quite rewarding for people to construct their own versions of the story and weave the disparate elements into new narratives. They would often incorporate elements of the backstory without explicitly knowing of it. It was thrilling for us to hear our story told in someone else's words. Even more inspiring were the new stories that emerged, built on our invisible scaffolding. |
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| | <html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/8390862149/" title="Borrowed Scenery ARN - 11 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8230/8390862149_7096f8795b_c.jpg" width="800" height="532" alt="Borrowed Scenery ARN - 11"></a></html> |
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| === A glimpse behind the story, or how to practice patabotany in a candy store === | === A glimpse behind the story, or how to practice patabotany in a candy store === |
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| Aside from inviting people to the patabotanists' lab, we borrowed from the urban and online spaces where plants and humans interact. We began with a picnic((The picnic menu: http://libarynth.org/patabotanical_picnic)) in the Citadelpark where we asked visitors to partake in an experiment involving the ingestion or smelling of plant substances to accentuate or alter their experience. We were present at a community market, celebrating the beginning of autumn with a Harvest Fest, where we exchanged plant preserving techniques, recipes and produce. For two months we took visitors on walks to discover urban flora on the streets of Ghent: edible and medicinal plants, historic trees and other noteworthy vegetation. We mapped these walks and the plants using Zizim, a mobile app for urban foragers, and translated them into Aniziz, an online game where plants could come in contact with the patabotanists.((Zizim (the field guide), Aniziz (the game), Dilzio (the journal of conversations) and Garginz (the reference archive) can be found at http://borrowed-scenery.net)) We met 'Ghent plant people' (farmers, gardeners, city ecologists and other plant connoisseurs)((Interviews and conversations between Imogen Semmler and Ghent plant people: http://libarynth.org/Ghent_plant_people)) and listened to their stories. Finally, on the day the clocks changed to winter time, we descended into the warm greenhouses of Ghent University's botanic gardens where we sang to and with plants in the language of Hildegard von Bingen's plant-infested //Lingua Ignota.//((Highley, S. L. (2007). Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan)) | Aside from inviting people to the patabotanists' lab, we borrowed from the urban and online spaces where plants and humans interact. We began with a picnic((The picnic menu: http://libarynth.org/patabotanical_picnic)) in the Citadelpark where we asked visitors to partake in an experiment involving the ingestion or smelling of plant substances to accentuate or alter their experience. We were present at a community market, celebrating the beginning of autumn with a Harvest Fest, where we exchanged plant preserving techniques, recipes and produce. For two months we took visitors on walks to discover urban flora on the streets of Ghent: edible and medicinal plants, historic trees and other noteworthy vegetation. We mapped these walks and the plants using Zizim, a mobile app for urban foragers, and translated them into Aniziz, an online game where plants could come in contact with the patabotanists.((Zizim (the field guide), Aniziz (the game), Dilzio (the journal of conversations) and Garginz (the reference archive) can be found at http://borrowed-scenery.net)) We met 'Ghent plant people' (farmers, gardeners, city ecologists and other plant connoisseurs)((Interviews and conversations between Imogen Semmler and Ghent plant people: http://libarynth.org/Ghent_plant_people)) and listened to their stories. Finally, on the day the clocks changed to winter time, we descended into the warm greenhouses of Ghent University's botanic gardens where we sang to and with plants in the language of Hildegard von Bingen's plant-infested //Lingua Ignota.//((Highley, S. L. (2007). Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan)) |
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| | <html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/8390894121/" title="Borrowed Scenery ARN - 89 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8049/8390894121_c9cee53f78_c.jpg" width="800" height="532" alt="Borrowed Scenery ARN - 89"></a></html> |
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| 'In bringing the spiritual and the material together in her Lingua, she invoked what the Russian formalists called //ostranenie// – making the familiar strange, or rather making the things of this world divine again through the alterity of new signs. In this sense it is a product of her //Viriditas// – greenness – making moist and green what threatens to become corrupted, mendacious, ill-used and dried out, but it is also a product of her keen interest in divine structure: The Tower reassembled.' – Sarah Highley | 'In bringing the spiritual and the material together in her Lingua, she invoked what the Russian formalists called //ostranenie// – making the familiar strange, or rather making the things of this world divine again through the alterity of new signs. In this sense it is a product of her //Viriditas// – greenness – making moist and green what threatens to become corrupted, mendacious, ill-used and dried out, but it is also a product of her keen interest in divine structure: The Tower reassembled.' – Sarah Highley |
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| Borrowed Scenery with its visceral connections to gardens and plants was eerily familiar. It was site-specific, designed for the Snoepwinkel and the streets of Ghent with online portals to other realms. The story was – for both practical and conceptual reasons – filled with gaps that encouraged associations and 'joining the dots'. Its intention was to become a reality. Even though as an ARN it existed for a brief moment in time, its seeds continue growing through consensus reality in unexpected ways: Zizim became a scientific app used to map lobster populations in the UK and a way to track urban agriculture initiatives in Ghent; Arboreal Identity has been translated into a guided nature walk in Brussels; the patabotanist archetypes are being translated into ethnobotanical Tarot cards; Inner Garden will be performed in other botanic gardens, spreading Lingua Ignota and patabotanical ideas further. Slowly, imperceptibly, the alternate keeps seeping into the everyday. Is it still a story or did it become reality? In the end, we might not be able to tell the difference. As in //shakkei// gardens, the ARN starts from ourselves, includes the cultivated frame of the storyworld and extends into untamed, infinite realities – consensus or otherwise. | Borrowed Scenery with its visceral connections to gardens and plants was eerily familiar. It was site-specific, designed for the Snoepwinkel and the streets of Ghent with online portals to other realms. The story was – for both practical and conceptual reasons – filled with gaps that encouraged associations and 'joining the dots'. Its intention was to become a reality. Even though as an ARN it existed for a brief moment in time, its seeds continue growing through consensus reality in unexpected ways: Zizim became a scientific app used to map lobster populations in the UK and a way to track urban agriculture initiatives in Ghent; Arboreal Identity has been translated into a guided nature walk in Brussels; the patabotanist archetypes are being translated into ethnobotanical Tarot cards; Inner Garden will be performed in other botanic gardens, spreading Lingua Ignota and patabotanical ideas further. Slowly, imperceptibly, the alternate keeps seeping into the everyday. Is it still a story or did it become reality? In the end, we might not be able to tell the difference. As in //shakkei// gardens, the ARN starts from ourselves, includes the cultivated frame of the storyworld and extends into untamed, infinite realities – consensus or otherwise. |
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maja